You are either a PC or a Mac person, I feel. I’m a PC person. Maybe I’ll change. But I went to school for PC Tech stuff, both my partner and I did. We can build them. configure them, tweak them, repair them. Except for laptops. There is more software for PC’s. The games we (mostly he, now) plays come out for PC first, Mac is months later.

So shaddup if your only comment here is to say “Mac rulez PC droolz”.

(wait a minute….isn’t this a sex blog? *looks around* yup. sex blog. why the fuck is she babbling about geek shit?) You only have to deal with the once in a blue moon. Let me say my piece.

I brought home a coworker’s Dell tower a month or so ago to fix for her. I thought it would be a relatively simple software fix. It wasn’t booting up, you see. Shut down one day whilst the teenage boy was playing his MMO and just refused to wake. So I took out the harddrive, hooked it up to my box, and checked it out. I love telling people “um, you know you didn’t have antivirus, right?” They argue. They could swear they did. When oh yes, they DID, but they were using Norton or McAfee, whatever came with, and has since run out of the subscription. So, the day is spent doing virus scans, because whether or not the harddrive needs wiped, I need to save their precious files. Sweet jeebus on a stick those kids downloaded an assload of stuff.

When my child is of downloading age (my future child, presuming we’re still downloading pirated crap 20 years in the future, prolly not as there will be Jetsons-type stuff by then dontcha know), I will sit him/her down and show them the proper safe way to download. The trusted link site and P2P software (i.e. NOT LimeFuckingWire).

But I digress. A good ole search online revealed others having the problem. Dell themselves confirmed that the motherboard’s realtime clock was toast. Replace the board.

Here’s Reason One why I hate Dells, and really mostly all brandname computers: You’ve got just ONE option for replacing this board. It’s all proprietary.

So we looked for a replacement board cause, oh yeah, sorry but Dell’s warranty is only 90 days. 90 fucking days?!? Whatevs.

When he cracked open her case, it looked as if they’d never opened it to clean it. There was enough globs of dust to build a complete frankenbunny, the size of a giant lop. I took pics then, but don’t know what I did with them. She claimed to me that they did, in fact, open it up and clean it every 4 months. Ok, whatever.

We finally got the replacement motherboard, and he opened it up again to to the swap. Bitch of a thing, as the fan was -monsterous-. Only a certain range of processors ran hot enough to warrant such an unwiedly beast, and she got that sort of processor. The case design is STUPID. So when the fan was taken apart to get the board out and in, we found yet MORE dust. A veritable carpet of dust. Here, see for yourself.

The average computer user could not possibly clean this. They should never ever open things up this much. So basically, it’s a ticking time bomb of doom, just waiting for imminent fry-death, being choked by dust. Why does this happen? 1, they used a goddamn processor that required a behemoth of a fan. Stupid. 2, behind that fan, as you’ll see, is a big huge open meshy area. Just SUCKING in all of the dirt. I’m amazed she ever had to dust her goddamn apartment, that’s how much was in the case.

Stupid fucking piece of shit. But we can’t build computers for people. They won’t pay the money. They can get a prebuilt one, and because they only surf the web, chat, email, and create documents, they won’t care. We can’t buy parts at a good enough discount, for one. For two, he’s picky. There are brands that deserve the money spent, like Asus boards. Lian Li cases. Zalman copper heatsinks. But alas….

Installed the new board. Boots up like a champ. Now I have to copy back all their files. And lecture the teenagers on safe downloading practices. I feel like I should take along pamphlets and the computer equivalent of condoms, or something.

~ Warning to the men: if you click that link, a half naked guy will appear on your screen. FYI to the girls: Ignore the fact that he’s only 19 and go ogle the half naked guy that will appear on your screen ;) ~L

http://www.jsgotgame.blogspot.com sage

Well I had no idea you were sposed to clean em at all!
haaaaaaaaaa
I’ma puter idiot
I dont have a pc though I’ma lap topper!!
hmmm prolly sposed to clean these too huh?

~ *grins* A laptop is still either a PC or a Mac, hon. But no, don’t clean the laptop! Don’t open it for gods sake! lol, no no no. ~L

Jake

Haha thanks for the warning Lilly, I should have considered that!

Our old Windows tower PC at home is a tip inside, about 4 years ago it was opened to put some RAM in and it was a dustbowl then, I dread to think what it’s like now! In fact I’m surprised all that dust hasn’t ignited yet!

Who really opens up and dusts their computer? I’m bad enough at dusting my room, let alone the internal workings of things!

I bet if you give the old motherboard a wash in mineral spirits and a rinse in rubbing alcohol and give it a good cleaning… the *CLOCK* issue will go away…

Oh Yeah… Have all the same training you mentioned in your post as well and work in the PC world as well… Playing games are great… on a PC

But when it’s important and I need to get some work done, I can’t worry about crashes, blue screens of death or viruses, I do it on a Mac.

Just sayin…

~ I’m really not going to say much to this because I didn’t want to start up PC v. Mac discussions. But I can’t just tell everyone who comes to me with a dead PC to go buy a Mac….And since I myself can’t repair a Mac, can’t upgrade a Mac, etc etc ad nauseum, I’m not going to switch, either. Perhaps when I buy a laptop. ~L

http://shouldhavebeenhereyesterday.blogspot.com/ garbonzo

That’s why the Mrs. bought me an Etch-a-Sketch. every time i have a problem, she just takes it from me, gives it a good shake, and we areback in business!

Deviant Little Devil

I’m a PC kind of guy, I have a Dell, bought a bare bones one and did my own upgrades. Set it up the way I wanted it.

~ That’s a bit better but….I’m just overall upset that Dell went ahead and used the short range of processors that required a fan almost as big as my left tit. Dude having this fan in the tower, with the mesh grate in the case, is like having a Dyson inside. Seriously, the amount of dust and dirt sucked up is UNREAL. You think what’s in those photos is bad, you shoulda seen it before! ~L

James

Don’t know why you’d advise against opening a laptop – they’re not that bad nowadays, not like the spring-loaded, try and catch the processor with a net when you open it things of the past. Also, compressed air cans – it’s a godsend for cleaning out dust :)

As for Dell, yeah, the proprietary crap is so annoying it’s unreal. Getting replacement parts for a Dell laptop is a bitch – it’s so pathetic how they deliberately build things so you can’t replace simple stuff with generic parts.

As for Macs, yeah, they’re sweet and simple, and you have to pay for it. Maybe one day I’ll have enough money to have a computer that’s not held together by duck tape and string, the frakencomputer made from bits of 10 other old ones, and I’ll buy a Mac…

~ I’m advising against opening up a laptop to the generic computer user. Popping off the side of a tower case and sticking a can of air at the fans isn’t a huge deal. I feel there’s too much potential for a non-tech-geek to break something if they open a laptop. Sure Mac’s are sweet and simple but you don’t upgrade a Mac. You buy a new one. I love that if I wanted a faster video card right now, I could get one. when we buy those, we buy a rung or two down the ladder from the top so as not to hemorrhage out money. Now, that card thats two rungs down from the top is maybe 2 rungs above mine. I can also upgrade my proc now if I wanted to. ~L

Sex Toy Steals & Deals

Sites and Directories

The blogs listed above only represent what I'm reading right now. But there are still a whole lot of lovely people that I enjoy on Twitter, so you should check out this Twitter List, too. Follow them, check out their blogs if they have one, etc. You don't want to miss out on this!